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Jan 6 committee subpoenas Meta, Google, Reddit etc. after 'inadequate responses'
- pumaontheprowl 5y agoThese companies overwhelmingly support the Democratic party. The idea that they are deliberately stonewalling this investigation strains credulity. Poking some of their most powerful allies like this feels like a tactical error for the Congressional Democrats.
- davesque 5y agoIn a way, that seems to suggest that the investigation is about ascertaining the facts instead of avoiding upsetting powerful allies.
- benpiper 5y agoEver heard of the McCarthy hearings? We went from "everyone we don't like must be a communist" to "everyone who says people cheat at elections is spreading misinformation." This pearl-clutching over "misinformation" is tiresome and pathetic.
- RickJWagner 5y agoIt's an interesting idea. I can easily imagine that the next time the GOP controls congress they'll ask similar questions of outlets like CNN and MSNBC vis-a-vis the George Floyd riots. People should be more considerate of the opposition when they're in power. Payback is almost assured, and sometimes even with escalation.
- umvi 5y agoThe implication from the committee is that these companies should have monitored and suppressed/censored their users harder? Is the committee looking for a scapegoat or something?
- tonfreed 5y agoAmazing that you can burn down all the poor areas in cities all across the US and be declared heroes by these people, but by gosh if you raid the Congress candy drawer you're in deep trouble.
- geodel 5y agoWell, I mean ofcourse. They are just "restoring" the democracy
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- ben_w 5y agoIs it? What I got from the quotations the article chose to use was “we don’t have enough info and we think you have not told us everything we need to know to about what happened”.
- gilbetron 5y agoNo, the "inadequate response" they are talking about is that the companies didn't give them the information the committee is asking for. So they are using subpoenas to get it. If there is a trump org, or connected org, that was pushing propaganda on Facebook trying to get people to do something violent, that is extremely important and fully within congress' mandate to have access to. Likewise, if the opposite occurred, and if there isn't any propaganda or misinformation, that's important as well.
- DerpyBaby123 5y agoWhy do you jump to that conclusion? Youtube's algo is long suspected of pushing more and more extreme/radical content, and the comittee seems to be looking for more information on if that process affected the Jan 6 riot That's not looking for a scapegoat; it's looking for a set of root causes
- oxymoran 5y agoMan, the democrats are really trying to hand republicans every election for the next decade.
- guerrilla 5y agoNot that I disagree, but how does this particular thing factor into that?
- newaccount2021 5y ago
- akomtu 5y agoThis Jan6 committee doesn't look legit, to be honest. Issuing subpoenas and jail time for ignoring those subpoenas is the courts' territory. I dont understand how a bunch of legislators, who were elected to write laws, created an "emergency committee" with judical and executive powers.
- ModernMech 5y agoTo be clear, the Jan 6 Committee sent criminal referrals to the DoJ, so the judicial system is the one deciding the fate of these individuals, not the Committee. In fact Steve Bannon's due process has been preserved; he has a court date set and he is currently free on bail. Mark Meadows has not been charged yet, but that will also be decided by the DoJ. It's worth pointing out though, that Congress does in fact have a power of inherent contempt that enables them to enforce their own subpoenas. This is a separation of powers concern: what if Congress needs to subpoena someone in the Executive branch or DoJ in particular?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoTHey are the only thing standing between us and a fascist government beginning in 2024 when Trump is reelected. If they don't take down his coup attempt and get him banned from office for life, this country as we know it is over.
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- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoThis kind of pressure on companies to censor seems like an end around on the first amendment. It technically is not the government censoring or mandating censorship, but it uses the threat of government power and the power to irritate and harass for companies that don't toe the line. Unfortunately, I can only see this getting worse. For example, if the Republicans come to power in 2022, I can see them having a committee hold hearings on the "riots" of 2020 and subpoenaing all these companies about how their platform was used to organize the protests/riots. Soon, companies will just censor any attempt to organize a protest online.
- throwawaysea 5y ago> This kind of pressure on companies to censor seems like an end around on the first amendment. It technically is not the government censoring or mandating censorship, but it uses the threat of government power and the power to irritate and harass for companies that don't toe the line. Absolutely. These tech companies know they face the threat of regulation, whether on anti trust grounds or labor issues or whatever. When Twitter banned Trump, they wrote a blog post (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...) that offered no good reason and pointed at things like his refusal to attend Biden’s inauguration. AOC also demanded that tech companies censor Parler (https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx), and Apple/Google/Amazon all complied. The timing of this sudden and willing compliance from all these companies who historically would resist, was not coincidental. It happened because there was a coming change of administrations, and this compliance bought them favor. Glenn Greenwald has written many great articles on this topic, but here’s a particularly relevant one: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...
- cmiles74 5y agoThe larger issue, in my opinion, is that people seem to be looking less for clear and understandable information about current events and more for skewed (possibly even false) information that they find entertaining, comforting, etc. I can understand why some people might think the next step would be to improve the quality of the information from the sources that are providing this skewed, stilted and possibly even false coverage, but I have trouble seeing this working well enough to improve things in any meaningful way. On the contrary, it seems like this kind of news will be even more sought after as it becomes harder to find. That said I don't have a good solution. Maybe somehow promoting better sources of news or making it easier for these more reliable news sources to generate income.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoWe have a First Amendment... but if you run a platform that does not even use the First Amendment, you'll get subpoenaed and harassed. In theory, I ran a platform that protected everything the First Amendment did, and protected nothing that the Amendment did not protect, I should be legally in the clear. But I'm not going to attempt such a thing - because it's clear Congress would do the ultimate shakedown.
- Ardon 5y agoBut this subpoena has nothing to do with the first amendment, they're demanding for more records, not levying a penalty for not removing these people.
- barney54 5y agoNot necessarily. The First Amendment is implicated if the federal government is trying to get these companies to act on their behalf and censor speech.
- Ardon 5y agoRight, but this subpoena isn't doing that. The 'inadequate response' in the title of the post is referring to the companies' response to congress' request for data, not saying the companies' response to the speech on their platform was inadequate.
- barney54 5y agoYes, I understand that. My point is that many in Congress want these companies to preemptively censor what happens on their platforms and these subpoenas is an attempt to build that case.
- shrimpx 5y agoWhat do Twitter and Reddit have to do with the first amendment?
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- altgoogler 5y agoDisclaimer: am googler, my opinions are my own. I have no non-public knowledge on this topic. It's not clear to me what the House committee is asking for. From what I read in their letters it's basically, "We think you have more than you've given us, so give it to us". That's not how this works. If you want to subpoena information, you need to be specific and targeted. If you don't get what you think you want, call people in to testify. Here's the actual Committee release [1]. Two quotes from the Alphabet letter: "For example, Alphabet has not produced any documents that fully explain non-public moderation discussions and policies" "Additionally, Alphabet has not produced documents relating to YouTube’s policy decisions" But, IIRC, YouTube (and Twitter) were pretty publicly vocal and specific about their policies for months preceding Jan 6th. I just don't see what warrants this round of grandstanding. [1] https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-subpoenas-social-media-companies-records-related-january-6th https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-comm...
- creaghpatr 5y agoThe press release is the endgame here.
- kerneloftruth 5y agoI think they're also sending a message: Censor more! (because the mid-terms are coming).
- satronaut 5y ago
- etataetaet 5y agoAlmost no one (~5%) agree with lawmakers being able to trade stocks. This is one of the few things that basically all Americans agree on. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/588630-76-percent-of-voters-support-banning-lawmakers-from-trading-stocks-poll https://thehill.com/homenews/news/588630-76-percent-of-voter...
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
- dang 5y agoPlease stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. You did it repeatedly in this thread (over a dozen comments!) - that's not cool. Please don't do it again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935954.
- kerneloftruth 5y agoYes -- I almost stopped early in the article at "the deadly attack". It was a disgusting action taken by the mob, but the nation heals more if the press acts _honestly_. Media bias (especially on that story) only divides and embitters people.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoYes... some people died, but it wasn't what the media made it to be. Two protesters died of heart attacks, one died of an overdose, and one died of being shot by a cop. One died of a stroke and was widely misreported of being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher when that didn't actually happen, and four cops later committed suicide. This is all according to FactCheck.org. Was it great? Absolutely not - but it wasn't anything remotely close to, say, even the most minor altercations between America and Britain.
- dontreact 5y agoWhat do you think would have happened if things went a little differently and the mob got to Nancy Pelosi? They were very close to doing so.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoWe would have a funeral for Pelosi, but democracy would be no closer to dying. And while it's a tragedy for anyone to be murdered, hype about it "nearly killed democracy" is just inflammatory.
- IgorPartola 5y agoI get some kind of sick satisfaction out of watching a certain small subset of HN lose their mind trying to square the circle when it comes to stuff like this. On one hand “this is government overreach!” (it’s not because the committee here is on a specific task to investigate a specific crime) and “free market!” and on the other hand “big social media companies are evil and decide what’s right and what’s wrong.” Nevermind that this has nothing to do with “cancel culture”, “censorship”, or “mainstream media” and everything to do with an investigation. Just read the headline and get angry at… someone?
- benmmurphy 5y agoif congress is investigating a 'crime' then it is overreach because that is not the responsibility of congress. congress has investigatory powers like the subpoena power in order to help it make decisions about passing law. it is not meant to use this power primarily to pursue individuals.
- throw0101a 5y ago> if congress is investigating a 'crime' then it is overreach because that is not the responsibility of congress. If a crime was committed by the US Executive branch (e.g., President, e.g., Nixon), should the Executive branch investigate itself? Congress investigating things goes back a few centuries: > On November 4, 1791, some 900 U.S. army troops under the command of Gen. Arthur St. Clair, a Revolutionary War veteran, were killed or wounded in a surprise attack by Native American warriors on the Ohio frontier. The following year, in what was the new nation’s first congressional investigation, a House committee was formed to look into the debacle, which became known as St. Clair’s Defeat. As part of the investigation, the committee asked President George Washington for paperwork pertaining to his administration’s management of the failed expedition. * https://www.history.com/news/6-famous-congressional-investigations https://www.history.com/news/6-famous-congressional-investig...
- netizen-936824 5y agoAren't they working on passing some sort of 'big tech antitrust' law? I could have sworn that's a thing right now...
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- lukifer 5y agoThe Jan 6th event (whatever word one uses) was far from secret. Most of the coordination happened in public, and the participants were not shy about their intentions. After reddit shut down /r/TheDonald, the "pedes" migrated to thedonald dot win (which I think has since been shuttered and moved elsewhere). With all the claims being made about a stolen election, I was watching that site with morbid fascination in December and early January, including the planning for the 6th specifically (I assume it's still in the Wayback Machine). The talk ranged from vague protest, to a quasi-Occupy strategy of refusing to leave until results are overturned, to explicit calls to violence and far-right fantasies ("1776 solutions to 1984 problems", "day of the rope", etc). And the whole time, I assumed: obviously this is on the radar of the FBI and the "IC". These idiots are out of their depth: they don't even know how to use encryption to coordinate their attempted coup, and they're gonna walk right into a regiment of Feds on the capitol steps. Luckily Trump is fundamentally a coward, and Pence has some shred of integrity (or just sense), and the participants failed to galvanize a response from the more mainstream Trumpers. But if you want to talk about an "inadequate response": the gross incompetence of our bloated national security apparatus failing to do the only thing that justifies their existence really takes the cake; and I can't help but think all the Congressional hearings and hand-wringing and crocodile tears is a theatrical distraction from that institutional failure.
- mzs 5y agoDiscord is missing, a lot of talk before Jan 6th happened there too. Maybe they already cooperated in better faith?